In speaking about how we experience theworld,we are beginningto venture intothe sacred real mof consciousness, a
topic not for the faint of heart. So let us pause and take stock. We have been attempting to create a conceptualist
account of the intuition that linguistic expressions refer to things in the world. The answer so far is that a deictic
linguisticexpressionlikethatin(10)canbelinkedwitha percept.Inturn,a perceptisan f-mentalstructureconstructed
by the perceptual systems in response to stimulation from the outside world. Although a percept does not necessarily
correspond exactly to what is“actually out there”(especially with virtual objects), the experience that accompanies
having a percept in one's f-mind is that of an object in the world. Hence we experience the deictic expression as
referring to this object.
In short, the proble mof reference for the intuitivelyclear cases is not at botto ma proble mfor linguistic theory, it is a
proble mfor perceptual theory: how do the mechanis ms of perception create for us the experience of a world“out
there”?
Some readers will no doubtfind this stance disquieting. My dear friend John Macnamara, with whom I agreed on so
much, used to accuse me of not believing there is a real world. Similarly, Jerry Fodor, in response to similar
conceptualist arguments by Chomsky (2000), says:
...in what way is the plausible clai mthat there are banks (that is, that there“really are”banks) not warranted?
There is, for example, the bank that holds my mortgage. That is not just a way of talking; they make me pay up
every month, cash on the barrel. How on earth could that be so if there really are not any banks at all? (Fodor
2000b: 4)One reply would be that mortgages are just as much a mental construct as banks. But there is a deeper reply: we are
ultimately concerned withreality for us, the world in which we lead our lives. Isn't that enough? (Or at least, isn't that
enough for linguistics?) To paraphrase Dan Dennett, who subtitles his bookElbow Room(1984) asThe Varieties of Free
Will Worth Wanting, it's useful to ask what varieties of reality are“worth wanting.”The reality in which you are reading
this book and Jerry Fodor is paying his mortgage is certainly worth wanting; my claim here is that this world is a
product of our human modes of perception and conception. If you want to go beyond that and demand a“more
ultimate reality,” independent of human cognition, well, you are welcome to, but that doesn't exactly render my
enterprise here pointless.^157
I think one could be perfectly justified in stopping at this point, satisfied that reference has been“reduced to a
previously unsolved problem.”But I a mgoing
REFERENCE AND TRUTH 309
(^157) Smith 1996 is an attempt to build the metaphysics of“reality for us”fro mthe ground up, one that dovetails attractively with the approach taken here.